"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The many months of attempting to find the “anti-Romney,” the candidate without a large state government health care plan or a more liberal governing record in his past, seem to have been unsuccessful.
As foretold by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in November 2011, the political press at that time was ready to commit to nearly a year of avoiding Romney’s ‘inevitability,’ engaging in an “extended masquerade, designed to persuade credulous readers and excitable viewers that the Republican presidential nomination is actually up for grabs.”

Masquerade, my right big toe. Every single day had to be played out, and it’s pure hooey to pretend otherwise:

Romney could well have imploded, a la Akin. Still could.

The base had to be identified, and persuaded to get off the couch.

The issues had to be identified, publicly mensurated, and sorted.

Anybody who says that, without the nomination process as a whole, Romney would not have arrived at Paul Ryan as VP pick is really doing a disservice. The primary votes were cast (I didn’t vote for Romney in the VA primary) and those results were important information for decision making upstream.

In summary, I reject all this: “your voice doesn’t matter, it’s all decided by the power brokers” noise. Pure disinformatzya. Keep an eye on anybody circulating it.

Comments

http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

Spot-on.
Anyone who follows the advice of Ross Douchehat is a fool.

Dave R

I don’t believe it’s all decided by shadowy power brokers, but if only one credible candidate runs (Perry and Pawlenty had the background to join the credible candidate group, but were never able to gain the minimum following they needed to avoid flaming out early; Santorum and Gingrinch had sufficient experience but began the race with reputations that doomed them in a general election and the majority of the electorate knew that for at least one of them), then he’s going to get nominated unless he blows up spectacularly. And Mitt was always very unlikely to blow up spectacularly.

CPAguy

Once Cain dropped out, Conservatives were screwed. Anybody who bothered to research the other candidates rather than get caught up in news cycle hype could realize that the others were largely big government RINO’s who tried to hijack the Tea Party movement.

Ultimately, maybe Santorum was the only other person who could have represented the movement to some extent…but his record is wanting and a bit too similar to Hugabee’s for my taste.

http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

Oh…and: Don’t Blame Me – I Supported Sarah Palin.

http://twitter.com/BatesLine Michael Bates

Smitty is right, and things could have been very different. Although the lengthier nominating process still gave us Romney, it gave us a better Romney than we would have had if the rules had allowed Romney to sew it all up in February.

However, Romney is in the process of undoing any goodwill he’s built with grassroots Republicans by pushing rules changes designed to ensure that no future establishment candidate ever has to face as tough a climb as he faced this year. There may well be a floor fight over the rules on Tuesday.